1830.] [ .529 ] 



THE LIFE, CHARACTER, AND BEHAVIOUR OF MONSIEUR, 

 TALLEYRAND, THE FRENCH AMBASSADOR. 



THE appointment of M. Talleyrand, Prince of Benevento, as ambas- 

 sador of Louis Philip the First to the Court of Great Britain, has 

 excited in his own country the expression of conflicting opinions ; one 

 portion of the public press most acrimoniously reproaching him with 

 the ready docility of his submission to the various forms of government 

 which have been imposed upon France during the last forty years: 

 another applauding his adherence to each, as a proof of his wisdom and 

 patriotism, and as but resorted to so long as the measures of successive 

 rulers were calculated to promote the welfare of France. Perhaps the 

 apologists and the accusers of " the Prince" (Machiavelli, haply, pos- 

 sessed some insight into Futurity, as he inscribed the title of his work) 

 may find no contemptible materials of praise or blame ; but the immu- 

 nity, accorded to ambassadors in other respects, may, under actual 

 circumstances, be extended by us to the past, public, and private life of 

 Monsieur Talleyrand. We may adopt the prudent and grave maxim of 

 a French senator in all trying events : and in recording some of the 

 chances and changes of his extraordinary career premise, " For me, I 

 have no opinion : that is my sentiment !" It has been asserted, and pro- 

 bably with due reflection, of the frailties of our nature, that 



" On n'a pas toujours le moyen 

 De demeurer homme de bien ;" 



and if we accede to the truth of the observation, innumerable difficulties 

 are at once removed by this comprehensive apology for the faults of 

 man : we are at once enabled to refer to Monsieur de Talleyrand, 

 without entering upon disquisitions as to the motives of his actions, or 

 the propriety of his conduct. We might, in the first place, speculate 

 long and curiously on what the feelings of Monsieur I'Ambassadeur 

 were, when he entered London, as compared with his first and former 

 visit to our metropolis. Now the accredited agent of a mighty empire; 

 an object of intense interest to all classes of British society, from the strange 

 phases his life has assumed ; of a name less illustrious by the honours 

 attached to it, than from the high reputation for diplomatic and general 

 talent with which it is connected; influential in his own country by rank 

 and wealth, and the power knowledge confers ; and of a vigour in moral 

 faculties that mocks the infirmities of fourscore years, and refuses to 

 participate in the decadency of his physical powers. After having 

 enacted, a la rigueur, the frivolous duties of a Parisian Abbe in his youth, 

 as laid down by the ancient regime, and given to gallantry all that was 

 then required of a noble aspirant to the honours of the church ; after 

 having justified in the fields of love and wit his title to the mitre of 

 Autun ; after having abandoned it for the bonnet rouge; and after having 

 endured all the nominal pains of papal excommunication, and been 

 figuratively exposed to the torments of an auto-da-fe in the streets of 

 Rome, the ex-prelate felt himself obliged to fly his country ; and, nearly 

 forty years since, humbled in circumstances, as depressed in spirit, he 

 sought safety and shelter (" from the sublime to the ridiculous is but 

 a step," indeed) in Took's-court, Cursitor-street, Chancery-lane a 

 domicile which, at this day, may puzzle the geography and defy the 

 curiosity or conjecture of the fashionable world compared to which 

 Macedonia itself is what Whitehall was erst to Alsatia what Paris is to 

 Van Dieman'sLand or what the performance of recent candidates forPar- 

 M.M. New Series. Vol. X. No. 59. 3 X 



